President Trump has now done what his critics have been demanding, focusing directly on the pandemic, offering a negative assessment and no longer insisting that it will magically disappear.
And he was still beaten for it.
Now the return from the coronavirus briefings was not perfect. He had the feeling of an intervention by presidential advisers who wanted to stop the political bleeding on Covid-19, with Trump reading a prepared script before answering some questions.
In the past, when aides pushed him to the prompter, the president generally rebelled in a day or two. He will return to his previous rhetoric in comments to a journalist or by sending tweets. And that cannot be ruled out.
But isn’t it a positive step for Trump, after many weeks of minimizing the coronavirus, to say “it will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better”?
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Isn’t that a step in the right direction for the President to stop talking about small “embers” across the country and say we also have “big fires,” naming Florida as an example? Especially with an increase in new cases in the south and west, and the country exceeds 1,000 deaths in a single day?
It is no secret that Trump wanted to go from the virus and reopen the economy, along with other problems such as urban crime. That’s why he canceled Season 1 of the meandering reports about the White House virus, where he spent a lot of time training with journalists and that even his inner circle concluded that he was hurting him.
Season 2 is a tighter production, with shows on Tuesday and Wednesday lasting about half an hour, but it puts the pandemic back on top of the White House agenda.
Why Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx were not included is difficult to understand. These are not really reports, and Trump had little information to announce. They are press conferences.
The president was a bit more optimistic yesterday, speaking about helping seniors, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, sticking to a prepared script again, and even held back when responding to reporters. Well, except for the part where he talked about doing more for blacks than anyone except Abraham Lincoln.
But part of the session had nothing to do with the virus when reporters asked him about the controversy over sending federal police officers to Portland.
The open format also meant that when a journalist asked about Ghislaine Maxwell on Tuesday, Trump answered the question. It would have been better if I had diverted it. When Trump said he wished him well, they know each other in Palm Beach society, sparking a wave of criticism (even from some Republicans) over sympathy for a woman who helped Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse girls.
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The president also changed course in the long debate about the masks. “I have no problem with masks … Anything that can help, and that can certainly help, is a good thing.” He told reporters that “you saw me use it several times and I will continue.”
Journalists have actually seen Trump wear a mask exactly once. And there is no need for the press to play with revisionist history. Trump was ambivalent to skeptical for months and is now catching up with Mitch McConnell and other Republicans who have been strongly advocating the use of masks.
CNN, by the way, talks about Trump and the virus all the time, but didn’t broadcast Tuesday’s briefing until he began answering questions.
We are in the midst of the greatest threat to the health of Americans in a century, with more than 140,000 deaths so far. We need the President to lead an aggressive response while in office. It’s okay for the press to hold you responsible for past mistakes, but that shouldn’t be the obsessive approach.
